Going through the indie backlog, today's dinner was To the Moon. Hoo-kay, still feeling sort of horrible and needing a hug, which isn't what I'd expected from a game that looks like just the kind of pixel-graphics JRPG that don't appeal to me at all, and which starts off with humor that I find rather annoying.

The story works, the balance between gameplay and storytelling is good, and all in all it was another surprisingly touching indie game.

I found this to be one of those stories where the ending is ostensibly happy, except that if you think about it all, it's actually quite horrible.

Playing DC Universe Online again, I'm reminded of just how... interesting it can be to play a game that requires communication in an area where a large chunk of the population speak at least four different languages, and they don't bother to learn each others' languages.

The Spanish are the most numerous non-English-speakers I've come across. The French are slightly more prone to at least speaking some English, and the Germans seem to do pretty well in that respect overall. But there are a lot of non-English-speaking Spaniards and Frenchpeople. And when you're trying out a new raid and trying to figure out the raid mechanics, that makes for one hell of a time.

Of course I'm not going to blame the Spanish and French for this. Me, I'm Norwegian, and I'm fluent in English, know a teensy bit of German, and I'm starting to learn Russian. But the challenges make me envy you US people for only having two languages to deal with, one of which is vastly dominant.

So far I'm enjoying Fallout New Vegas. It's a hell of a lot more focused than Fallout 3. I'm hoping I can just play the game and deal with the quests, so I'm not tempted to just spend days walking around and killing scorpions.

Also bought myself Heavy Rain, which I haven't had a chance to play yet. It LOOKS really good though.

A couple comments about Fallout New Vegas: It is much more focused, and if you want to go off the beaten path (which is part of the fun in Fallout) I recommend the companion quests. Almost all of them have engaging stories.

Also, not sure what version you got, but if you have the chance the Old World Blues and Lonesome Road DLC's are amazing. OWB has plenty more of the old school Fallout humor and Lonesome Road illuminates some of the story left unstated in the original game.

I bought myself a cheap Megadrive off eBay last week, and yesterday I took a soldering iron to it to add a region switch to it so I can play games at the speed the developers intended.

It feels really weird to me playing games on it though. I've played plenty of Megadrive games via emulation in recent years, but there's something about playing on the real thing that is firing off all sorts of childhood memories that I'd long forgotten.

The Megadrive/Genesis remains my favourite console, thanks to a combination of nostalgia and just generally oddball, unique titles which are left in obscurity thanks to the SNES' far larger popularity.

Also, there is something to be said about playing the physical game on the console as it was intended. I hope you're using a CRT TV, as the input lag can be severe in some cases and the image looks much better as compared to modern televisions. I doubted it until I tested the difference myself, now I won't use anything before 6th gen on my flatscreen.

What InvincibleM said... If you have the space and outlets for a huge box, a good CRT TV is very worth getting for, well, pretty much all consoles up to and including the PS2/GameCube/Xbox. So smooooooth.

Just make sure to get one that's 60hz compatible. Not all of'em are in Europe.

... Auuuugh, now I'm once more reminded how much it sucked to be a gamer in Europe up to the mid-PS2/GC generation. Can you believe that it was a novel experience to get a game where you DIDN'T have black borders on the top and bottom of the screen?

The signals may be fine, but most games from the CRT era are made for the CRT TV's softer image. A lot of the jaggies wind up smoothed out. Kinda ironic that a LACK of sharpness makes things look nicer.

Yeah, a lot of the 'transparency' effects in MD games are done by just rendering every other pixel and letting the CRT blur it out.

I'm finding that I'm stunned how much of a difference there is on the games from the PAL 50Hz to the NTSC 60Hz. I knew it was bad, but I'd never experienced it personally until now.

One of the things the PS1 generation brought in was that you couldn't really lock execution to the vertical blank anymore, nearly all games from that point on ran at the same speed regardless of region, and it was that generation where I started getting into importing games from abroad so I missed the worst of the dark ages (well, I didn't miss it, I just didn't know it was as bad as it was)

If we've lost you, here's a YouTube video done by the guy who wrote up the instructions for the mod I made that demonstrates it...

Oh, the PS1 generation and a lot of the PS2 generation was just as bad at slowing down 50hz gaming. It's why some of the games on the European PSN store are American versions even though there were originally European versions... The publishers are realizing that PAL conversions were generally crap, outside of the few that were properly optimized.

Nintendo have a mixed track record in this. One of their worst sins was failing to optimize the Super Game Boy, of all things... Meaning that ALL Game Boy games you played on a PAL SNES were slowed down.

I don't know if this is the best place to ask, but has anyone had problems with a particularly old PS3? Mine is close to 3 years old (not exactly close to 4, but going in that direction) and it's recently begun taking forever to load and quit: It's had a particularly loud fan for ages now, I've had to shut it off from the power-point a few times because it just takes so long to quit (either the game or the system itself) and in the past day it's taken upwards of 5 minutes to simply get to the choose user screen. I'm guessing it's time to try and trade it in for a PS4 (in which case: anyone who has one of those; what's it like?) but I'd love to hear what anyone here thinks.

Jamie Heron: One quick thing you can try is to get a can of compressed air, and blow a bunch of it through the fan openings. Get some dust out.

You could also try to format the hard drive on it. Crap builds up, slows things down.

If that doesn't help, well... I'd advise you to simply get a new PS3. They're not terribly expensive nowadays. The PS4 isn't as good a media player as the PS3, if that matters, and also doesn't play PS3 discs. Not to mention that there really aren't that many games out for the PS4 yet.

I'm getting the PS4, but that's as someone who HAS a working PS3, Vita and 3DS.

If anyone's considering The Witch and the Hundred Knight as a possible fun JRPG/action game, I'm going to spam up the thread with a link to the preview I wrote. The relevant part is this-

The Hundred Knight defeats Metallia’s witch rival at the end of the second level. Metallia has already made herself unlikeable by constantly referring to her rival as “slut” and “whore” every chance she gets, which is often, but after the witch’s defeat she goes for broke. She changes the witch into a mouse and then summons three male mice to screw her rival senseless. This is made completely and undeniably clear with full text and voice acting- Metallia sets her rival up to be gang raped. It may be a cute and mousey gang rape, it may happen off screen as mouse-witch runs away pursued by the three “hot and horny” male mice, and later events show that the chase is interrupted before it can turn to a gang rape, but it’s still attempted rape. Who the hell thought this was a good idea and what on earth is wrong with them?

Just as a bit of a heads-up. While I'm enjoying the action of the gameplay, this seems like the kind of plot point that would affect people's interest in purchasing a game.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight has been on my radar for a while, but I have enough of a backlog I cancelled my pre-order shortly before it came out. I was still planning on getting to it once I'd caught up on some of my gaming. That plot point completely killed my interest in purchasing it. The heads-up is definitely appreciated.

twentythoughs: Well I've already had to format the hard drive recently, so I'll definitely try out the compressed air - and if that doesn't help yeah, I guess I will get a new PS3 - I somehow forgot I haven't played The Last of Us yet, been too distracted by X-Com...